An alien runs around on a spaceship and eats its generally unlikable (human) crew. The premise is still as flimsy as it sounds, and the film is still as cool as it has always been.

High on style and anemic on substance, Ridely Scott's Alien is easily the glossiest and most artistically elegant entry in the expansive franchise bearing its name.

But for all of its cutting edge visuals and innately disturbing design schema, the film is...at its core...little more than a glorified re-jiggering of numerous genre faves. Much like the original Star Wars movie, what Alien lacks in raw originality it makes up for in sheer audicity. Even when it was released in 1979, the film's conceits were often painfully familiar  but the ingredients had never been baked quite so deliciously, and they still taste good to this day.

Alas, it's likely that 20th Century Fox's reissue of Alien (featuring a new restoration of the film and its sound, along with footage not present in the movie's original theatrical run) is driven more by marketing mechanics than genuine love for the product: Fox Home Video is currently putting finishing touches on an Alien Quadrilogy DVD boxed set, said to contain the original cuts of all Alien titles, "director's cuts" of each film in the cycle (only James Cameron's Aliens Director's Cut existed until now), and an unfathomable assemblage of supplemntal materials. There's insessant talk of star Sigourney Weaver and director Ridley Scott returning for a fifth installment in the franchise. The highly anticipated (and conceptually dubious) Alien vs. Predator crossover will hit theaters next year, under the direction of stylish-but-heinously-misguided megahack Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat). In other words, "They want your money," and this "reissue" is merely a portent of things to come.

Nonetheless, many people have never seen Alien on the big screen, and this smartly conceived resotration will (literally) give a new generation the opportunity to see Scott's masterwork the way it was meant to be seen. A dazzling embodiment of the addage "style over substance"  featuring respectably earnest performances condemned to signify nothing from the outset  Alien is a theatrical experience which not to be missed by fans of the franchise, casual SF enthusiasts, or film buffs who might appreciate how overwhelming the simplest, "no brainer" concept can become when guided by a director with a passionate, powerful, and singular vision.

As a side note, Alien is written by a man named Dan O'Bannon (who would later write Governor Schwarzenegger's Total Recall). O'Bannon also scripted John Carpenter's Dark Star  a very low budget film made five years before Alien. Dark Star is a deeper (and, admittedly, funkier) examination of the perils of long-haul space travel  featuring a mission gone terribly wrong. One way it goes wrong? A dopey looking alien is brought on board the titular ship, and chases around scuzzy crewmen. Sound familiar? I guess even in 1979, everything old was new again.